[Granite]

I guess an echo (when you're talking to yourself, no less) is comforting to some...

Sidestepping what's happened on this thread may be convenient, Bob, and regurgitating what you already posted may save you time, but it's still the same intellectual cheapness as before. Some things never change.

[Yorzhik]

Originally Posted by Granite

I guess an echo (when you're talking to yourself, no less) is comforting to some...

Sidestepping what's happened on this thread may be convenient, Bob, and regurgitating what you already posted may save you time, but it's still the same intellectual cheapness as before. Some things never change.

Man, there's some classic Granite. Impervious to any line of good logic, and freaking out with righteous indignation about a point not even raised.

[Servo]

Originally Posted by Granite

I don't consider a blastocyst a "baby," but I oppose the destruction of that life.

Originally Posted by Yorzhik

Man, there's some classic Granite. Impervious to any line of good logic, and freaking out with righteous indignation about a point not even raised.

I know. Granite is opposed to killing a blastocyst, but he doesn't think it is a baby. Weird.

[Granite]

There is no pleasing some people.

[Bob Enyart]

Granite, consider this an official alert. I'm about to remind our KGOV audience (with an update to the show summary for Aug. 14) that you have not yet responded to my comments, just above, which are critical of your claims.

-Bob Enyart

[Turbo]

Originally Posted by Granite

I don't consider a blastocyst a "baby," but I oppose the destruction of that life.

Does this mean that your position has changed? Does this mean that you now oppose the use of hormonal "birth control" which, when failing to prevent ovulation, causes the destruction of such lives?

[Granite]

Originally Posted by Bob Enyart

Granite, consider this an official alert. I'm about to remind our KGOV audience (with an update to the show summary for Aug. 14) that you have not yet responded to my comments, just above, which are critical of your claims.

-Bob Enyart

Yes I did, Bob. But since by your own admission you haven't kept up with the entirety of this thread you may have overlooked it.

[Granite]

Originally Posted by Turbo

Does this mean that your position has changed? Does this mean that you now oppose the use of hormonal "birth control" which, when failing to prevent ovulation, causes the destruction of such lives?

I guess erring on the side of caution, whenever possible, is the best way to sum up my position. While I wouldn't consider a blastocyst in the running for "personhood" I don't think it's a good idea to screw, tamper with, or unnecessarily interfere with its development. Leave well enough alone...unless or until it's not well enough. Hope that makes sense.

[Bob Enyart]

Granite,

There is no need to confuse the simple matter of what makes a living human being by implying that destroying or discarding some cells (like tonsils, trophoblast, etc.) equates to destroying the entire human.

And yes Granite, err on the side of caution! That is the loving path when it comes to human life. But the question of when a unique human life comes into existence is not in doubt biologically, and when someone obfuscates that fundamental issue, they are playing with fire.

Now, I've gone back and read the remainder of your posts, and you have not yet responded to my criticism of your argument (although, along with Turbo, I'm glad to see the direction your argument is headed).

Not that you have any obligation, but if you want to, feel free to respond to my criticism of your comments in my post just above. Suggestion: You could say: Bob, good point, I wrongly over-stated the case when I said that a human blastocyst "doesn't resemble anything 'human' in any way, shape, or form."

Thanks, -Bob Enyart

[Granite]

Originally Posted by Bob Enyart

Granite,

There is no need to confuse the simple matter of what makes a living human being by implying that destroying or discarding some cells (like tonsils, trophoblast, etc.) equates to destroying the entire human.

And yes Granite, err on the side of caution! That is the loving path when it comes to human life. But the question of when a unique human life comes into existence is not in doubt biologically, and when someone obfuscates that fundamental issue, they are playing with fire.

Now, I've gone back and read the remainder of your posts, and you have not yet responded to my criticism of your argument (although, along with Turbo, I'm glad to see the direction your argument is headed).

Not that you have any obligation, but if you want to, feel free to respond to my criticism of your comments in my post just above. Suggestion: You could say: Bob, good point, I wrongly over-stated the case when I said that a human blastocyst "doesn't resemble anything 'human' in any way, shape, or form."

Thanks, -Bob Enyart

Human life and human personhood, I would submit, are not identical. I think that's really what our fundamental disagreement is about. I don't doubt life begins at conception--at a basic level, who does--but the pro-life movement seems to make much more of that statement than I would. I don't see that as obfuscation, I see it as a distinction. How important is that distinction? I suppose it depends. Do I think a blastocyst is a "person"? No. Do I support abortion because of that? No, I don't.

You're right, I did phrase my statement incorrectly. I should have said: "A blastocyst does not in my book resemble a person in any way, shape, or form."

Not sure if that'll annoy you just as much. I'll take my chances.

[Bob Enyart]

Granite, thanks. We're making progress.

I just wish I didn't have to rush out right now to meet a Denver pastor, Ron Fox, for a theology discussion over lunch. (Actually, I'll love the meeting, but I don't know when to find the time to get back to this thread.. .

-Bob Enyart

[Turbo]

Originally Posted by Turbo

Does this mean that your position has changed? Does this mean that you now oppose the use of hormonal "birth control" which, when failing to prevent ovulation, causes the destruction of such lives?

Originally Posted by Granite

I guess erring on the side of caution, whenever possible, is the best way to sum up my position. While I wouldn't consider a blastocyst in the running for "personhood" I don't think it's a good idea to screw, tamper with, or unnecessarily interfere with its development. Leave well enough alone...unless or until it's not well enough. Hope that makes sense.

Is that a "yes" to each of my questions? If so,

[jhodgeiii]

Originally Posted by Granite

Human life and human personhood, I would submit, are not identical. I think that's really what our fundamental disagreement is about. I don't doubt life begins at conception--at a basic level, who does--but the pro-life movement seems to make much more of that statement than I would.

Human life and human personhood certainly can be identical (one of the medical doctors from one of Shimei's links above testifed: "The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception.")

Perhaps the problem that pro-lifers have with your insistence of a distinction between life and personhood is that making such a distinction tends to strip away human value as you go back toward conception. Thus, it can be reckoned that killing a blastocyst is not as bad as killing a fetus; killing a fetus is not as bad as killing a newborn baby, etc. No one can draw any line because personhood has no clear definition!

I don't see that as obfuscation.

By definition it's obfuscation being that you injected personhood as a relevant distinction, yet personhood has no clear, objective meaning.

All in all, I'm happy to hear that you're against abortion, but there's no reason to give pro-aborts a wild card to justify their immorality.

[wholearmor]

A satanist can be pro-life?

[Bob Enyart]

Granite, I appreciate you talking through this with us, and it has opened the door for me to take the discussion a bit further.

You wrote: "Human life and human personhood, I would submit, are not identical."

If a doctor scrapes cells from a patient’s mouth, and they remain living for a time, we could say that is an example of human life. So, personhood and life are not identical, as you say, in such circumstances, although in normal discussion, we speak of a human life and a person interchangeably, as synonyms.

I don’t know you or the position you hold very well. [Although it grieves me that you describe yourself as a Satanist, since only Jesus Christ can forgive you of your sins.] But it seems that you had been drawing a line for personhood at implantation. But surely, even by the argument you had presented, that is arbitrary, because at the moment of implantation, the embryo, by your standard, still wouldn't resemble your prerequisites for personhood (although in reality it does). You have been pushed down this road of making a distinction where we typically don’t need to make one, between human life and personhood, because you’re wrestling with understanding when does a human being, a person, come into existence, and you had been trying to defend that arbitrary threshold of implantation. That’s why you introduced the distraction of the trophoblast (discarding some cells, like tonsils, is not the same as destroying the entire human, so the fact that the embryo does not incorporate trophoblast cells, which become the placenta, is not relevant to the question of personhood, but is only obfuscation).

Then you wrote, “A blastocyst does not in my book resemble a person in any way, shape, or form," clarifying your earlier claim that he or she has “No sentience, no ability to feel pain, nothing recognizably human.”

I just referred to the blastocyst as he or she because we know that his or her gender and countless other particulars are already set, at fertilization, and only await expression.

Your claims of what the blastocyst cannot do have overreached your understanding. Sentience, i.e. awareness, does not come from our physical existence, but from our soul. How do I know this? Because knowledge is NOT physical. Knowledge, in this case, knowing that I exist, is not material, it is not physical, but something else. We have words for things that are not physical, like spirit, and soul. At the moment of fertilization, a unique, living, human being comes into existence, and it does not need to wait for its brain to be wired to acquire sentience, because no configuration of matter, regardless of how complex, can instill non-material ability to that matter.

Also, pain is not physical. Plants do not have souls (which are non-material), and when you chop down a tree, it does not feel pain (a 60s sci-fi episode not withstanding). Pain is comprehension, it is knowledge, and knowledge is not physical. Granite, you assumed that a blastocyst cannot feel pain because it’s physical configuration has not developed sufficiently to register pain. First, the DNA in our human cells, including in the blastocyst, is the most complex arrangement of matter known in the universe, sufficiently complex to assemble the human brain, which is the second-most complex arrangement of matter in the universe. Thus, the blastocyst is not incapable of feeling pain because it lacks sufficient physical complexity. Secondly, you overlooked the fact that awareness of pain requires awareness, and awareness is knowledge, and not a physical attribute. Whether you reject Scripture or not, Christians have the benefit of its wisdom. And so we know that at the moment of fertilization, the pro-created, unique, living human being is alive to God. I don’t mean alive in that God sees a living cell, as He could do with biopsy cells. Rather, the genetically complete, new human life is itself aware of God. It is alive to God. And by the way, before the embryo implants, even as it is coming down the fallopian tube, it cries out to its mother (actually, physically, with a hormonal cry), saying I’m hungry, asking mom to get ready to feed the little one, so that she can make preparations to feed him, and to receive her baby into his home for the next nine months!

Regarding an inability to feel pain, when a doctor cuts in our brain matter, we do not feel pain from that. It would be wrong to kill an injured person who has passed out, or who we assume just can’t feel pain. Pain is non-physical, it is awareness, which is a state of knowledge. You can program a robot to back up suddenly if it bumps into a wall, and even to yell, “Ouch.” But it hasn’t felt pain, because it is only made of atoms and molecules, and can have no awareness. Because pain is inherently non-physical, pain resulting from non-physical causes is dramatically more hurtful than pain resulting from physical stimuli. A paper cut on the eyeball really hurts. A father who will not look his disowned son in the eye is far more painful. Perhaps if you have been abandoned by your parents, you might be able to know the pain felt by the little one who is purposefully rejected by his mother, intentionally killed, by a chemical weapon, the Morning After Abortion Pill, because she didn’t have the time to love him. She called it Plan B. Her dismissal (and yours), of the little one’s ability to feel pain will do little to alleviate it.

Granite, you wrote, “I don't doubt life begins at conception--at a basic level, who does…”

Yes, life begins at conception. And I know you mean that it begins at that blast of life that we call fertilization. And you are right. The abortionists are wrong. But that’s not only the science, it is the moment of truth, in that twinkling of an eye, where each of us decides, whether to honor God who so wonderfully made us, or to disobey him, and to justify the unthinkable, and to swing open the doors of the slaughterhouse.

-Bob Enyart